The Last White Man

Riverhead Books, 2022, pp. 192.

Abstract

Essentially focused on the phenomenon of “race”, Mohsin Hamid’s The Last White Man (2022) also deals with human relationships, loss, love, connection, and identity. Peeling away our outer layers, Hamid exposes our inner selves grounded in bigotry as the novel seeks to envision a new world of self-identification and empathy. The Last White Man illustrates the social, racial, and political injustice that reverberates in American society and the characters’ journeys of survival when confronted with the former. One devastating morning, Anders finds himself to be a stranger to himself when he discovers that his white skin turned dark overnight. First, he tries to confirm his transformation by checking himself again and again in his cellphone and the mirror; however, once certain about the change, he experiences murderous rage at the ultimate robbery of his whiteness and the infliction of the crime. Anders apprises Oona, a friend and lover, who is also “taken aback” at first, “not merely because he was darker, but because he was no longer recognizably himself, beyond being the same rough size and shape”. The same happens across the region as they witness the daunting upending of a conventional system that is challenged with people becoming undeniably brown. Racist people develop into self-racists, and race becomes only a matter of color difference. Oona, Oona’s mother, and all unknown individuals become brown with only one exception, that is, Ander’s father who dies soon; yet the relationship between them excavates the reality of racial prejudice.